Is Bluehost a good web host?
Bluehost Hosting Review (2022): Is It Good? Bluehost Hosting
Review (2022): Is It Good?
Bluehost is one of the most popular and cost-effective web hosting services available. In our Bluehost hosting review, we look at what's behind the scenes, how good the platform is, and whether it's the best fit for your next website project.What is Bluehost and what services does it provide?
Bluehost has become one of the most popular hosting businesses, especially for WordPress blogs, throughout the years.
Just looking at their homepage and all of the numerous goods Bluehost has to offer reveals a lot about why it has so many fans. To begin with, Bluehost offers a wide range of hosting services, not simply ordinary website hosting.
Second, their pricing are quite reasonable. In addition, you will receive a number of free goodies. As a result, the entire cost of launching a site is significantly lower than what you'd have to pay if you went with the competitors.
But first, let's go through the basics. Here are the several hosting options offered by Bluehost, including one that is likely to be the most popular among users.
Let's break down the list into a few categories:
1. Entry-level web hosting
In Bluehost's web hosting portfolio, this is the most affordable option. These plans are typically chosen by customers who are unfamiliar with the concept of owning a website and the necessity for web hosting.
Bluehost's entry-level hosting services are divided into two categories:
While the latter may appear to be superior if you wish to use WordPress as your website engine, they are actually the identical product. According to what I've observed, this is just a different marketing frame, but the internal pieces are the same.
2. WordPress hosting that is managed
The above-mentioned basic WordPress hosting plans are exactly that: basic. Bluehost, on the other hand, offers a Managed WordPress service that is more advanced.
The managed option, as opposed to the basic one, takes care of all technical aspects of hosting setup and WordPress maintenance for you.
To put it another way, if you choose managed WordPress hosting, you won't have to worry about anything connected to keeping your site up and running. Instead, you may concentrate solely on establishing and promoting your website.
Managed plans also provide you greater power behind the scenes, which is vital for sites that have a strong market position and receive a lot of traffic.
Bluehost also has a special WooCommerce-enabled WordPress hosting package for eCommerce stores. Some WooCommerce-specific elements are pre-installed on such plans (WooCommerce itself, an optimized theme, payment processing tools, security, extras).
If you're looking for a host because you're going to open a WooCommerce store, this is most likely the best option.
3. Use a professional hosting service
Bluehost's professional-level hosting is the top grade of their service. There are two primary goods here:
The former is a fascinating concept that revolves around virtualization hosting. The term VPS refers to a virtual private server. What you're truly obtaining is access to a web hosting configuration that runs on a larger, physical server as a virtual machine. It's a good arrangement to use when creating web apps or other web-based goods that aren't necessarily webpages.
Dedicated servers are useful when you really need a whole physical machine at your disposal. This is often the most expensive and powerful web hosting package accessible to most businesses.
Features and cost of Bluehost hosting
As you can see from the table above, Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans and levels, each with its own set of features.
For the sake of this Bluehost hosting review, we'll look at the Basic Web Hosting plan, which is the most basic option.
It's the most cost-effective option in the lineup, and as a result, it's the most popular among clients.
Here's what the pricing page looked like at the time of writing:
Bluehost, as you can see, has a very economical plan that starts at just $2.95 per month. However, the first thing you should know about this price is that it is only available if you sign a three-year commitment. It's also paid in advance, so you'll have to pay $106.20 on the first day.
There are possibilities to start with shorter contracts, but the prices rise as the length of the contract increases. Here's the whole story:
- 36 months: Basic $2.95/mo, Plus and Choice Plus $5.45/mo, Pro $13.95/mo
- 24 months: Basic $3.95/mo, Plus and Choice Plus $6.95/mo, Pro $15.95/mo
- 12 months: Basic $4.95/mo, Plus and Choice Plus $7.45/mo, Pro $18.95/mo
- Bluehost doesn’t offer month-to-month payment options
- But, for these costs, what do you get?
- Bluehost focuses on two things in particular:
- the most basic set of features and server capabilities that most users will want, all of which are simple to use and access.
On paper, all of the entry-level plans appear to be relatively similar, but there are a few minor variances.
To begin with, none of them is "more strong" than the other. In terms of computer power and "website scale," they can all manage the same amount of traffic. The biggest distinctions are in the size of the website and the number of websites you can manage.
You can only have one website on the Basic plan. You're also limited to 50 GB of disk space.
All of the other options allow you to run an unlimited number of websites and consume an unlimited amount of disk space.
This is fantastic since it implies that if you want to develop two or more websites, Bluehost will only charge you $5.45 each month.
Here's what you'll get in addition to that.
The fundamental strategy is as follows:
- 24/7 customer support via phone and chat (more on the quality of that later in this Bluehost hosting review),
- access to custom themes from within the Bluehost panel,
- a free domain name for the first year(!) plus access to a domain manager,
- email hosting – albeit it’s kind of hidden in the panel,
- a $100 Google Ads credit and Google My Business integration,
- free CDN integration – a “content delivery network” hook-up means that your website’s data is served from multiple servers across the web instead of just one machine; this improves your site speed a lot,
- free SSL certificates.
The Choice plan includes a one-month complimentary Office 365 subscription. Free domain privacy (so that no one may check your personal data associated with the domain name) and free automatic backups are included in the Choice Plus package. Finally, the Pro plan includes a dedicated IP address (which is useful when developing web apps/tools but not so much for normal websites).
Overall, there isn't much that could be improved. Bluehost has given some serious attention to what the most important web hosting features are, and then bundled them all together in this package.
In particular, the free domain is a significant plus! A fresh domain name registration costs roughly $15 in most cases. While it may not seem like much, it adds up to a significant portion of your overall website launch costs. The fact that Bluehost includes it for free is fantastic.
Take note. Keep in mind the cost of renewal. When you first sign up with Bluehost, as with most hosting companies, you will be charged a different rate than when you renew after a while. Those renewal fees are more expensive. Take another look at the pricing screenshot from earlier. Do you see the price that has been checked off underneath the main price? This is the renewal price, which is what you'll pay once your initial contract expires.
Bluehost hosting review: user-friendliness
Bluehost goes to great lengths to make the signup and launch of your website as simple as possible. They understand that anyone chooses the entry-level package is unlikely to have much experience with web hosting. Bluehost aims to make it as easy as possible for the user to configure everything without the need for outside assistance. All of this is done through the Bluehost hosting interface.
You'll be invited to your new user profile page once you've completed the purchasing procedure on Bluehost's website and everything is finalized.
Bluehost will ask you how you want to design your website and whether you want WordPress installed on your server right immediately. They'll even ask if you'd like to work on your site the old-fashioned way (by selecting a theme and customizing it) or with Bluehost's new builder interface.
I chose the first option because it is more frequent among WordPress users.
Then, right in the main dashboard, you'll get a few of recommendations for how to improve your site:
You can also log in to your WordPress site from the dashboard by clicking the Log in to WordPress button in the top right corner.
You'll find links to other useful sections in the left-hand sidebar:
Home. It's where you're at the moment.
Sites that I manage. Because most Bluehost hosting plans allow you to have several websites, this is where you can see them all.
Marketplace. Bluehost makes it simple to add third-party tools and add-ons to your site, as well as increase your hosting tier if necessary. You can buy and install those integrations with just a few clicks in this section.
Themes and plugins for WordPress. This is a sub-section of Marketplace, but I think it's important to call attention to it here. Custom WordPress themes are available directly from the Bluehost dashboard. It also connects directly to your site, allowing you to purchase and install themes from the Bluehost dashboard. This can save you a lot of time.
- Email & Office. Bluehost gives you an option to integrate your site with hosted email via Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. This is where you can enable everything.
- Domains. This is where you can manage your website domain(s) and purchase new ones.
- Marketing Tools. This section is all about making it easier to integrate your site with popular marketing channels such as Google Ads, Google My Business, and others.
- Advanced. Go here if you want to access cPanel (if this doesn’t sound like English, then Advanced is probably not a section for you).
Let's take a look at what's feasible when it comes to administering your website, because that's what the majority of us will want to do.
You'll see the following panel if you go to My Sites and choose your site from the list.
This is a convenient overview of your site's current status. You can manage your marketing promotions, backups, user accounts, security, and more from here, as well as access the themes and plugins you've installed.
What's amazing about this is that everything is beautifully presented, and you're spared the server jargon. It's not necessary to be an expert to understand what's going on.
And let me remind you that we're talking about a basic, entry-level hosting package that costs only $2.95 per month. So…impressive.
Performance and load times on Bluehost
So, we already know that Bluehost is inexpensive. Is it, however, quick? Isn't there supposed to be a trade-off somewhere? Is it a question of skill?
Let's have a look:
We conducted a simple test. We used Bluehost's tools to set up a site, publish some dummy material, add photos, choose a theme and customize it, and overall make the site look legitimate.
Then we threw in a few more plugins for good measure, like WPForms, Yoast SEO, Jetpack, and a few others.
The following are the findings of the tests, which were conducted in numerous locations:
I have to hand it on to Bluehost... The results are more than astounding, especially given this is a low-cost hosting solution!
With any hosting platform – even the more expensive ones – going below one second for US traffic is pretty much all you can ask for.
Customer service is a strong suit for Bluehost.
Bluehost provides phone and live chat service around the clock. Aside from that, there's a knowledge resource with lessons and answers to the most frequently asked questions concerning Bluehost's platform.
The support chat can be accessed through Bluehost's main contact page.
Bluehost will ask you a few questions to identify you as a customer before connecting you with a support agent.
When we were writing this Bluehost hosting review, a support agent responded almost immediately after we started the chat.
The conversation was great; the agent provided helpful suggestions and was eager to assist. However, it appears that we've reached a snag in terms of what they're actually allowed to do.
Granted, I had asked him to do something particular.
Conclusion of the Bluehost hosting review: Why should you choose it over another host?
At the end of the day, Bluehost appears to be an excellent option for those on a budget who want to establish a new website as quickly as possible and for a reasonable price.
Bluehost includes all of the standard hosting options you'd expect, and its performance isn't bad either.
Granted, the tests we conducted were not conducted over a long period of time, so your results may differ, but the early signs are extremely encouraging!
⚡ Pro tip: If you’re looking for a host to take care of all your new website ideas in one place, consider the $5.45/mo plan at Bluehost. It’s the first hosting tier that Bluehost offers that allows unlimited websites.
What do you think of Bluehost hosting? Are you going to try it out for your next website project?
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